Bloodbath

Backstage at the Metropolitan Opera, fifteen minutes before the start of a rehearsal for Act II of Wagner’s “Parsifal.” Six two-hundred-and-fifty-gallon tanks stand in a row at the rear of a shallow, ruddy-colored vinyl pool that covers most of the stage. Two stagehands in white hazmat suits step into the empty pool, each bearing a hose. Suddenly, blood-red liquid gushes forth. One of the singers, bare-legged, in a skimpy white slip dress, looks on silently, flexing her toes.

JOHN SELLARS (technical director): It’s water, food-grade glycerine, and red food coloring. You could drink it, though I wouldn’t advise it. It’s a little thicker than water. We get it from a special-effects company in Brooklyn. After each performance, it gets pumped out, irradiated, filtered, and delivered back to us for the next one. It’s delivered to us warm, and there are heating pads under the pool, to keep the ladies comfortable. We don’t want them to get blue lips, or whatever.

ERIC GAUTRON, the associate technical director, dabbles his fingers in the pool. When he removes his hand, it is stained red.

SELLARS: It’s arterial blood. Oh, yes, we got the artery.

Front of house. General hubbub and bustle of artistic and technical workers. SISSY STRAUSS, the artistic liaison, walks down the aisle.

PETER GELB, the general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, murmurs with DANIELE GATTI, the conductor. GELBhas one eye on the stage, which is rapidly becoming submerged. The set suggests a perilous, blood-filled chasm. We hear sloshing and splashing.

GELB: It’s a visceral kind of approach to the story. We are seeing the wound of Amfortas. Parsifal basically goes into the wound.

Gradually, the stage fills with about fifty female dancers and chorus members, all in white slip dresses. They step gingerly through the pool, which has been filled to a depth of two inches. EVGENY NIKITIN, who plays Klingsor, the sorcerer, kneels in the blood mixture, his dark suit becoming visibly sodden; he paddles his hands wrist-deep, smearing his hair and face. KATARINA DALAYMAN, who plays Kundry, enslaved to Klingsor, kneels onstage. As NIKITIN and DALAYMAN sing, other members of the cast stand in the pool, awaiting their cue. They have the tentative look of visitors to the shore who have forgotten to bring bathing suits. One dancer, stage right, raises a foot elegantly before her, turning it up so that the sole is exposed. It is the color of a fire truck.

Ninety minutes later; lunch break. DALAYMAN is in her dressing room, warming up. She has removed her dark robe and is now in a long white gown. Her feet and ankles are a delicate, pinkish color. She looks down at them with mild dismay.

DALAYMAN: I did wash them. It doesn’t come out.

FRANÇOIS GIRARD, the director, exits through the stage door, an unlit cigarette in his hand. He has a nimbus of curly graying hair and a scruffy beard, and wears wire-rimmed spectacles. GIRARD leans against a cold concrete wall in a subterranean corridor. He lights the cigarette. His French-accented English is idiosyncratic. His manner is intense, confidential.

GIRARD: Everyone tried to discourage me from it. Liquid is an obvious pain.

GIRARD takes a drag on the cigarette.

GIRARD: We started to feel we had a grab on this piece when we got to the blood. In Act I, we have a tiny river. When Amfortas goes offstage to bathe, it becomes contaminated with his blood. The river itself is a wound. It’s Amfortas’s wound; it’s Christ’s wound; it’s our wound; it’s the earth’s wound. It’s holy suffering.

GIRARD flicks ash to the sidewalk and turns to reënter the building. It is time for the rehearsal to continue.

GIRARD: We’re very close to the text. I’ve never been so close to stage directions. Usually I ignore them. ♦

Sign up for the daily newsletter.Sign up for the daily newsletter: the best of The New Yorker every day.